Hotel Hit Squad: With statement design and high-interest food, ex bank HQ The Edinburgh Grand is bang on the money

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The Edinburgh Grand is centrally located on St Andrew Square, in the heart of the Scottish capital

Has every great banking hall in the country been repurposed into something fabulously millennial replete with extravagant floristry and a degustation menu? The last time I was in an actual bank was the now closed, deeply unlovely Stoke Newington branch of HSBC, when I had to pay in a cheque – a bizarre physical artefact in a virtual world. It all felt like the most tedious anachronism, with the inevitable broken pen chained to paying-in slips. That disappeared because no one uses banks anymore, and all the great banking halls disappeared before it because people had long stopped equating a lavish façade and marble interior with reliability and quality product. The same could be said of many hotels....

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